“What, then?”
“Nothing.” Spock closed the panel and opened it again, checking that the addition could be concealed in the available space.
McCoy snorted with frustration.
“You see,” Spock said, “if I succeed, this probability-version of us will never have occurred. We will not fade out of existence because we never will have existed in the first place. It is quite simple and logical.”
“Sure.” McCoy gave up. He could feel his pulse accelerating with nervousness, and even fear; he did not even want to think about what his blood pressure must be just now. “Let’s do it and be done.”
“Very well.” Spock picked up the larger device and slung it over his shoulder. It dangled from its strap, glimmering like a cluster of large amber beads.
“Spock, wait—how will you get back ?”
“As you so astutely pointed out,” the Vulcan said, “if I succeed I will not need to come back. But if I should be forced to return, the energy required is far less. In fact, after achieving threshold energy, one is virtually dragged back to one’s own time. One sets up a strain that must eventually be relieved. The changer’s power-pack will be sufficient.”
“Should I wait for you here?—Will you come back immediately after you go? Or—” McCoy could not resist. “Or before?”
“I will endeavor not to return before I leave,” Spock said with perfect seriousness. “Though it would be
an intriguing experiment...” He paused, then returned his attention to the business at hand. “The calculations are far less complex if one remains away as long as one spends in the past. I expect to be gone no more than an hour.”
“I’ll do my best to be here.”
“Dr. McCoy ... if I am gone for an unconscionably long time, it is essential that I, or whatever remains of me, be brought back here, to my own time. Otherwise the conflict between where I am and where I should be could create difficulties; there is also the possibility of a damaging paradox.” He showed McCoy a control on the unit he had attached to the transporter. “The auxiliary changer will pull me back. All you need do is activate it. But this signal cannot be accurately aimed. It is not likely that I would survive if you were forced to use it.”
“Then I won’t.”
“Youmust . If I am gone more than . .. one day, you must.”
“All right, Mr. Spock.”
Spock stepped up onto the transporter platform.
“Goodbye, Mr. Spock. Good luck.”
Spock touched a control on his unit of the time-changer. The transporter hummed to life, but instead of the usual stable beam surrounding the figure on the platform, there was a tremendous flash, like rainbow lightning.
The lights went out. More frightening, the soft sound of the ventilation fans ceased, and the ship lay in a moment of darkness and silence so complete that McCoy thought the explosion had deafened and blinded him.
The Enterprise had lost all power.
Ian Braithewaite suspected instantly what was happening when the power went out: the same thing had happened on Aleph Prime when Dr. Mordreaux began playing around with his time-travel device. That was what had first alerted Braithewaite to the peculiar activities, and what had drawn him into this horrible complicated matter of conspiracy, treachery, terror, and murder. He cursed himself for underestimating Spock and Mordreaux; he cursed himself particularly for being too timid to run the investigation aggressively. He should have called in civilian police from Aleph long before now; he should have called in Starfleet as well. But he had been trying desperately to keep the time-travel capability as secret as possible, as he had been ordered; there was no point in suppressing the work if it were publicized all over the Federation.
Emergency generators brought the ship back slowly to an eerie half-light. Ian flung himself out of his cabin and pounded down the corridor toward Mordreaux’s cabin, fearing that the device had been used to take the professor out of even the absurd semblance of custody he had been in on the Enterprise . He wondered how long it would take before the ship was diverted from its course toward Rehab Seven—an suddenly realized that he had no way of knowing it already had not, except that surely Mr. Scott would know and tell him.
And how long will it be before we’re all told our fate? he wondered. To be sold to the Klingons, or to the Romulans, as hostages, and the starship peddled to the enemy; or were the plans for starship and crew more direct, more private? Ian Braithewaite knew that if he ever had such a creation as the Enterprise in his own hands, he would not let it go for any amount of treasure.
At the junction of two corridors, he stopped. What point to going to Mordreaux’s cabin? He would not be there: Spock had just freed him! But the science officer would have had to use the transporter in tandem with the changer. Ian might be able to catch him, at least. If he hurried.
He changed direction, and ran.
Still dazzled by the sudden flash of the transporter/ changer, McCoy blinked. In the darkness, he wondered if this was what it was like never to have existed at all.
“Mr. Spock?”
He received no answer.
He gradually became aware of the self-luminous dials on the transporter, casting a strange silver glow over his hands. He drew away, into the shadows, and stood quietly waiting for something, anything, to happen.
The darkness crept away in the dim illumination of emergency power. He waited: but nothing changed.
McCoy began to hear the shouts of consternation from nearby crew members: it was always traumatic, on the rare occasions when the power failed in a starship. Everyone was frightened.
McCoy did not blame them. He was frightened, too, and he knew what was going on.
McCoy glanced at the transporter platform, but decided it would be better to return in an hour than to wait for Spock here.
Starting out the doorway, he nearly ran into Ian Braithewaite.
“Damn,” Braithewaite said. “I hoped ...”
He blocked the door. Aside from being more than a head taller than the doctor, he was twenty years younger.
“It isn’t too late, Dr. McCoy,” he said earnestly. “I know what happened last night—I know what kind of stress you were working under. I know you weren’t yourself.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was awake, when Captain Kirk . . . died. I saw you arguing with Mr. Spock. I know you didn’t want to comply with his demands.”
McCoy stared at Braithewaite, dumbfounded.
“I can’t promise you immunity, not after last night.” He grasped McCoy by the shoulders. “But I know
how much pressure can be brought to bear on someone. I’ve seen what it can do. If you help me I swear I’ll do everything in my power to have this reduced from a capital crime.”
McCoy went cold. He realized—Finally you realize! he thought, it’syou he’s after, you and Spock, not just Commander Flynn or some faceless nameless phantom conspiracy.
Spock was not being so paranoid after all.
“Are you sayin’—” McCoy heard the soft threat again in his own voice. “Are you sayin’ you think Jim Kirk—Just exactly what are you saying?”
“Captain Kirk was still alive. I saw you disconnect the life-support systems.”
“He was dead, Ian. His brain was dead before I took him off the bridge, only I wouldn’t admit it. That’s what Spock and I were arguing about. I couldn’t admit that I couldn’t do anything to save Jim, I couldn’t admit that he was dead.”
Braithewaite hesitated. “You were so drunk you didn’t know what you were doing, how could you know if he was dead or not?”
“Even blind drunk I could have heard the brain-wave sensors. Hear them! My god, I’d been listening to them for hours.”
Braithewaite gazed down at him thoughtfully. “I’d like to believe you,” he said. “But why did you do it in the middle of the night, without contacting his family, or even his executor?”
